


predatory

by nymja



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cat x Ned mentioned, Cersei x Robert mentioned, F/M, Jaime x Cersei mentioned, Kind of fucked up, Prompt Fill, brief description of Jaime & Cersei sex scene from the first episode, even i don't know if this is one-sided or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 00:59:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: “You are unhappy, then?”Simple Ned. Cersei’s brows raise, but she keeps her attention focused out the window of a far wall. “And you, Lord Stark, apparently have use of your eyes.”“…Robert is a good man,” he says.Cersei smiles without warmth. “Is he?”





	predatory

**Author's Note:**

> for the asoiafrarepair mini event on tumblr! prompt: he is nothing like her husband

********Cersei steps out of the wheelhouse and casts her eyes about Winterfell for the first time. Her first thought is that it’s dismal; the second, backwatered. She looks to the Starks with their mixed-matched hair and dark outfits and she is too well-trained to outright sneer, but she is not impressed enough to force full courtesies. Uninterested, she passively observes as Robert embraces the kneeling Ned Stark, her gaze then going to the Lady Catelyn. Boring, she thinks. And Cersei Lannister has wasted away a month of her life for it. For her brutish, whore-mongering husband to ride over a thousand miles to collect solemn, honorable Ned. **  
**

But it’s not truly Ned he’s here for, is it?

She wraps her fur around her, striding to her place at the King’s side despite his lack of invitation. Ned’s eyes rest upon her. He is as taciturn as ever, with his grey eyes and downturned mouth. As expected of her, Cersei offers her hand. His gloved one takes it, fingers pressed against her own. He bends down, and when his lips press against her skin it is quick, cold. It’s a remarkable achievement, for a man to have lips colder than the air in the North. 

But in the moment, there is something about hearing him call her “my Queen” that permits a smile. It is slanted, yes. Short, yes. But there. 

Then his wife bows as well. “My Queen,” she greets.

Cersei’s eyes flicker to her, lingering just so she can take in the wild red hair, the Tully features. They are stamped all over their children but for the smaller ones. 

She is disgusted, but not surprised, when that is to be the end of her reception. Robert turns and demands, eager to get to where his precious she-wolf bitch lies.

“We’ve been travelling for a month, my love,” she says in the way she has practiced. The way that doesn’t cause repulsion to crawl down her spine and arms. “Surely the dead can wait.”

Robert does not acknowledge the statement. But then again, she has never truly existed for Robert when he can love and fuck ghosts.

Ned, because he is honorable, because he is so bloody noble, looks to her. When their eyes meet, Cersei remembers that this man knows her husband. Understands what it means to suffer him. And she doesn’t quite know what to do with the fact that he appears to be hesitating for her sake.

Cersei breaks the stare, looking down in dismissal. Ned Stark is a plain, boring man with a plain, boring wife in an isolated wasteland. What he decides to do with Robert’s offer means little to her, his opinion of her even less.

Still, Cersei’s eyes follow until their backs and shoulders disappear beneath the ground.

\--

When she can no longer stand the sight of her husband, or the insufferably dull conversation from Catelyn Stark, her eyes find and follow Ned Stark at the feast. He spends most of his time talking with his brother, his sons. His eyes do not wander, nor do his hands. Everything he does is patient and measured.

Robert presses his face into some serving girl’s tits, and once again Ned sends her that cagey, sympathetic gaze from across the feasting hall. Robert has been in Winterfell for mere hours, and Ned Stark has already made himself his keeper. Apologetic for behavior that has gone on for years--decades--without his presence. 

Sweet, simple Ned. Cersei raises her goblet to her lips, letting the bitter taste of Northern swill hit her lips. As Ned continues to watch, tediously chivalrous, Cersei taps one finger against the rim of her cup. Yet another silent dismissal. Another way to banish Ned Stark from her presence. Robert has had years of shaming her, this night is nothing but another in a long series. 

Spitefully, Cersei thinks of what Ned would do, were his Lyanna in her place and not in the ground. How would such a man balance the loyalty to a friend and the love for a sister? Would he be so weak as to turn a blind eye?

Jaime would never, has never. But her twin is beyond the tedious things that Ned so obviously clings to. Wolves follow, after all.

Ned watches her for a moment longer, concern etched into those features she cannot find attractive, but then his head is bowed in conversation with Benjen once again and Cersei Lannister is left to the state she enjoys best: unbothered.

\--

Her brother pounds into her, his grunts in her ear as her breath hitches and she makes her demands. Cersei is not bored. But when she’s taken from behind, it is easier for her mind to wander. 

And wander it does.   
Back to Ned Stark.

She wants to know what sex is, for a man like Ned. Is it duty to him? Something to suffer and grunt and sweat through until he feels diligent enough to sire some pup? Has he learned to lie like a fish to appease his Tully wife? Does she rake her nails down his back like a wolf? Somehow Cersei doubts it. She doubts that anything as cold, remote, and solemn as Ned can incite passion in such a way. When she imagines Ned, she feels his lips on her skin and his eyes on her and thinks he could not be further from her dear, dear husband.

Cersei Lannister wants to know just how well Ned Stark fucks, before his son appears in a window.

\--

“Your Grace,” he mutters, tension evident in every line of his rigid body. And yet the man finds it in him to make his courtesy. Noble noble noble Ned. 

Cersei’s eyes flicker to the dead direwolf at his feet. His hand still holds the blade that slew his daughter’s beast. “It seems you are always a man of your word,” she concedes, her hands folding into her long sleeves.

The camp is dark, lit only by the orange and yellow casts of torches. The light further harshens the severity of Ned’s features--long nose and bagged eyes and thin lips. 

“I’ve given no cause for you to doubt my honor,” he states, wiping away the direwolf’s blood on his leathers. 

“Forgive me,” she says, wanting anything but. “A mother’s worry triumphs any other doubts.”

Ned turns to face her then, pulling his body into a slow stand. She observes the motion coolly, but softens her eyes in the way she knows men like. It, of course, does nothing to phase this particular one. 

“Was it a mother’s concern, then?” His grey eyes are dark and there is something thrilling in knowing she has moved Ned Stark to anger. Something that makes her heart pound and her lips pull at the corners in victory. “That made a young girl pay such a price?”

“The price was bought with my son’s blood,” she reminds him coolly. “The blood of your future King.”

Ned watches her, and she realizes then that perhaps cold does not always mean reserved. She sees the way his anger settles upon him, it’s much like those cloaks the Northerners wear, broken in until comfort. Ned is a patient man, she realizes. He knows how to wait in a manner few men do.

“I regret the violence to your son,” he concedes. Cersei considers how his tongue shapes the words of his Northern accent, how it molds and curls around them. “Much like I hope Your Grace regrets the sorrows of my daughter.”

She tilts her head, blonde hair falling over her shoulder. “One of your daughters, yes.”

Ned cools at that, nostrils flaring slightly and fingers curled into his palm. “Arya’s young,” he defends. “She’s not yet learned to curb the wolf’s blood.”

Wolf’s blood, she thinks with a snort. Were Myrcella to have it, were her mother to be sweet, dead Lyanna, would Robert care for her then? Would he defend her in the face of another King? 

No, she thinks vehemently. Her husband would not, could not, do what Ned Stark does for his children. He lacks such capacities. Cersei’s gaze crosses Ned’s face, down his chest and legs. He is not a remarkable man, not comely. He is not strong nor fierce or hot-blooded.

He is not anything Cersei knows. 

“And how do you imagine she’ll learn that?” 

Ned watches her for a long moment. He has never looked upon her with lust. Only pity. Only concern. Only apology.

And now, disdain.

“Forgive me, your Grace,” he says levelly. “But I am poor company in the moment and must retire.”

Ned walks past her without another word, and something in Cersei’s gut ties itself into knots. 

There is something desirable, in not desiring.

\--

That night, as Robert lays on top of her and huffs the smell of wine onto her, Cersei closes her eyes and thinks of harsh features and grey eyes. She would be better than his fish, she thinks. Because Cersei knows how to please, when it’s a man she chooses between her thighs.

\--

She apologizes, in her way, as she walks into the rooms to the Hand of the King. Ned does not seem to find it satisfactory. 

But Cersei is an adept hand. And when she mentions Sansa favorably, the brittle edge to Ned Stark falls away.

“She likes it here,” he concedes.

“She’s the only Stark who does.”

He does not deny it, but she was not expecting him to. It amuses them, as they talk and he attempts to speak the language of King’s Landing. Ned is too rough and weathered for the painted smiles it takes to survive this place.

She does not think he’ll survive this place.

Cersei’s fingers slide over the wood of his desk. He stands across, weight supported on the fists he has pressed against it.

He would never sleep with her, she knows. But were he, she thinks he would not fascinate her so.

“Are you happy in your marriage, Ned Stark?”

His lips part at the question. “Your Grace?”

Her eyes dart up, catch his. “I only imagine a man happy in his marriage should want to return to his wife.” Cersei stops her motions, eyes darting to catch his. They are almost clear in the sun. “Do you? Want to return to your Catelyn?”

“Of course.” And there it is again, that steady contrast to what Cersei knows and understands. Clear, direct, and above all honest. “Perhaps you should return to your husband, Your Grace?”

She gives a little hum of a laugh at that, turning away. “Robert would sooner notice his favorite hound gone missing.”

“You are unhappy, then?”

Simple Ned. Cersei’s brows raise, but she keeps her attention focused out the window of a far wall. “And you, Lord Stark, apparently have use of your eyes.”

“...Robert is a good man,” he says.

Cersei smiles without warmth. “Is he?”

Ned does not answer. How tiring to spend so much time convincing oneself. 

She does make an effort to tell him: that Robert ruins things, that Ned will only be there to tend to them once they’re in pieces. He does not hear it over the waters he’s submerged himself in.

Good. Let him drown. 

Because she likes the thought of him gasping. Of Ned having to fight for something, to beg for something, thrills her. If she is the one who can put that upon him, so much the better. Cersei wants something from Ned. It doesn’t matter if it’s his discomfort. His anger. She wants to be the one who is able to break something apart, for a change. And noble, simple, boring, fascinating Ned is the fault line she wants exposed.

“I was trained to kill my enemies, your Grace,” he says lowly, eyes pinned on her. It does something to her, stirs something strange and necessary. Challenges.

Cersei smiles, lowers her voice in the way she would for a lover:

“So was I.”


End file.
